


Real and Imaginary Solutions

by natmerc



Category: Windrose Chronicles - Barbara Hambly
Genre: Character Study, F/M, Magic, POV Female Character
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-12-21
Updated: 2010-12-21
Packaged: 2017-10-13 22:55:12
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,859
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/142627
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/natmerc/pseuds/natmerc
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Knowing someone is hard when you don't trust your own mind.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Real and Imaginary Solutions

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Thevetia](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Thevetia/gifts).



> Thanks to Jan Levine, parhelion, dropsofviolet, mtgat, batwrangler and yeti for a very quick beta.

_Part 1 – Memory_

When Joanna met Antryg for the first time, she thought she’d encountered him before.  Weeks before, when she’d almost been killed, she’d felt the brush of a robe against her legs, and the feel of strong hands closing around her throat from behind before she’d hit him with her hammer and he’d disappeared.  They’d never found him and she’d never seen his face.

That night of Gary’s party, when Antryg appeared in his robe, jewelry and an air of bemusement, she’d stared at him and she’d known – known – that he was the one that had attacked her. Joanna had grabbed a glass full of something unidentifiable, thrown it back, and stared at him.  He was talking to another of the partygoers.

“No, actually, I’m a wizard from another universe.”  Antryg had smiled down at the woman in front of him, who was wearing a loosely tied red silk robe that did nothing to hide her body, barely clad in a yellow bikini. 

“You mean like Middle Earth and all that?”

Joanna watched them both from a few feet away.  She didn’t know why he would be at Gary’s party, was no longer sure why she herself was at Gary’s party after how Gary had treated her earlier. Right now, she was still caught in the memory of the feel of the long loose cloth against her legs.  It kept her spell-bound, staring at the couple in front of her.  The woman, Janie or Janice or something like that, plastered herself against the tall man’s thin body, her eyes gazing up at him in fascination and she trailed her hands through the bead necklaces around his neck.  Scraggly greying brown hair reached past his shoulders and a scanty beard covered his face. 

The man was very tall.  Was he too tall to be her attacker?  Joanna wasn’t sure.  Why would he be here now at Gary’s?  She moved over to Digby, who was using the door to prop himself up.  Smoke drifted up lazily from his hand and almost haloed his head.  Joanna smelled the strong odour of pot and almost took a step away. 

“Is he a friend of yours, Digby?” She kept her voice low, not wanting the man to hear her.

“No, Joanna.”  Digby took another drink from the glass in his hand. “Like I said, he’s a hallucination.  He just walked right out of this big hole in the air.”

Joanna tightened her grip around the computer printouts in her right hand.  She wasn’t even sure she wanted to wait for the routine to finish compiling before she left.  She was sorry she’d let Gary talk her into attending the party, and even sorrier she’d let him talk her into finishing up one of his projects and saying she’d oversee it for him.

All she had to do was go upstairs, send the kill command to the program and leave.

Touching her throat, she watched the robed man, accompanied by a laughing Janie/Janice, disappear farther into the house.  It was him.  Her attacker. She was almost sure.

Joanna shivered despite the warm evening air. Digby had said something else she hadn’t paid attention to, and then wandered off to the patio, heading towards the pool.

Part of her wanted to change into the bathing suit that she’d never taken out of the trunk of her car.  She wanted to shut out her uncertainties and social awkwardness in booze and pot until Gary’s cruel words no longer mattered.  Why was she still sleeping with him?  He’d been her first, but that didn’t bind her to him for life.

Her hand relaxed and she had to shift in order to catch the papers before they fell to the floor.  She was so clumsy sometimes.  The smoothness and bulk of the printouts in her hand centered her.  Work she could deal with.  Programs did exactly what you told them to -- nothing more, nothing less.  The recurring feelings of emptiness and depression Joanna had felt over the past few weeks meant something too,  must be a sign that she had to break out of the rut she was in. 

Around the desk, a semi-circle of light from the monitor reached out to her, the edges thinned out like fingers.

“Fix your own damn code.”  Joanna heard her own voice, soft and uncertain.  If she actually broke it off with Gary, could she ever find someone else who to care about her?  She rubbed her hands on her jeans-clad legs.  She had to do something besides wait. 

The lines swept across, across, across – Joanna blinked; aware that time had passed but not sure how much.  She’d heard a door open nearby and it had jarred her.  Turning around, she saw a tall man step out of the Gary’s guest bedroom, wearing jeans and a black T-shirt with silver writing on it.  He was standing there, framed in the doorway, and polishing his glasses with the edge of his T-shirt. 

Joanna blinked, uncertain.  Where had she seen him before?  He was the only one at the party besides her wearing jeans, and she couldn’t remember seeing him downstairs.  His hair was uneven, like he’d gone swimming and let it dry any way it wanted to, and his skin was far too pale for a Californian native.  He must be someone’s guest. 

She saw him sweep a hand up along the door frame and a mark appeared. It was just like the one she'd seen those weeks ago at work. The mark and the candle and the man who disappeared. That was him. It had to be.

This wasn’t then.  There were people everywhere, even if half or more of them were drunk or stoned.  She could be brave.

Leaving behind the computer and the world she knew, she stepped forward.  Closer to him, she saw the hair was ragged and uneven, a mix of brown shot and wiry gray strands. That step, soft as it was, was enough noise for him to turn towards her.  His gray eyes looked kind.

“It was you,” she whispered.

 _Part 2 – Gifts_

Her upbringing hadn’t prepared her for wearing ankle-length skirts or, for that matter, tramping cross-country with a wizard and a soldier.  Joanna desperately wanted a bath. It felt as if it had been weeks, instead of two days since they’d hidden from the Witchfinders -- in first in a public bathhouse, then a disreputable tavern.   They’d slept in piles of hay the past two nights, as they crossed farm after farm in this seemingly endless trek to somewhere.

She still couldn’t remember everything that had happened two nights ago, when she’d crossed from her world to this one, Antryg’s and Caris’ world. Part of her, in the depths of her mind, was still calmly telling her that this was nothing but a long drug trip, that one of the guests had slipped something into her beer, and she was probably curled up behind Greg’s sofa making all this up.

“Ow!”  Joanna slapped at her arm, where a flying insect the size of a small truck had tried to take a chunk of her flesh away.  

She’d stumbled another ten steps when a small bundle of what looked like six-leaf clover was pushed at her.  She blinked and stopped.  She was so tired.  Computer programmers were not meant to trek cross-country in magical lands.  The clover didn’t move. 

“Here, Joanna, take it.”  Antryg sounded cheerful and calm. 

Joanna looked up at him, way up.  It was unfair, how tall he was.  A scruff of hair dusted his cheeks.  “What is it?”

“Perridale.  You crush it, and rub it on your skin.  It keeps the horseflies away.”

Joanna took the bundle and looked at the leaves.  There were only three leaves per bundle, but they spiralled around the main stem in a way that she’d never seen before, giving the illusion of more.  She spared a few seconds to wonder if Antryg was trying to trick her, then just crushed the herbs and rubbed her arms, neck and cheeks. 

She thought about horseflies.  The insects weren’t horseflies, or at least not the horseflies she’d known on Earth when she’d gone horse mad as a teenager and forced her mother to let her try riding a couple of times.  The word for these insects was different.  She knew Antryg had said something else, but the translation spell had chosen her mind’s closest approximation.

Caris was rapidly getting ahead of them. In a few seconds he’d come back, insisting, in his stubborn way, that they keep together, that Antryg had better watch out and behave more like a prisoner, and that Caris would never forgive Antryg for doing whatever he had done to Caris’ grandfather.  A little Caris went a long way. 

Joanna started walking again.  She was too tired to try and catch up.  Caris could wait.  “Don’t you know a spell or something to keep the bugs away?”

“Well?”

“Why use magic when a herb will do just as well?”

“You don’t use magic because the Witchfinders could trace you and lock you up again in the Silent Tower.”  Caris’ voice was steady, but Joanna heard the undercurrent of anger that always seemed in his voice.

“Over something that even you could learn to do, Caris?  Likely not.” Antryg shrugged and absently tossed a couple of small stones in the air, changing the pattern of throws until he was juggling them as he walked.

Caris’ mouth firmed, and Joanna hid her smile.  It was hard not to like Antryg, very hard.  He had a sense of humour that fitted very well with her own, and a seemingly good cheer that nothing Caris said or did could dent.

According to Caris, Antryg had been locked up for the past seven years in a windowless tower where he could not do any magic at all. If so, Antryg couldn’t have been the one who’d attacked her at her job.  Antryg had told them that the tunnel that had taken him to Joanna’s world was the first one he’d found.  Caris believed otherwise.  Joanna didn’t know what to believe.

All she knew was this was no longer California.  The air had no taint of car exhaust or other pollution at all.  Maybe she was suffering from a drug overdose and hooked up to machines in a hospital by now.  Maybe she’d been kidnapped and was part of a strange trial by the government to see if they could make her believe she was in another world.  If so, they’d spent an enormous amount of money and used a lot of very convincing actors. 

Joanna thought of the pervasive stench of the sewers of the city they’d been in, the public bathhouse, the strange plants and the constant doubling of sounds and thoughts in her head as Antryg’s spell translated for her – and that little knot in her stomach shrank.  It was so hard not to believe.

“Another four miles and we’ll reach a village.  We can get a room there.” Antryg tossed the stones off into the field.  In the far distance, a small group of men were working with scythes to cut the hay. 

“I don’t have any money left,” Caris said.

“Well, since your oaths preclude you from hiring yourself out to earn our way, I will manage.”

“No spells.”

“No need.” Antryg’s eyes twinkled down at her. Joanna couldn’t help smiling. “Do they tell fortunes in your world? Telling people what they want to hear for pay is a magical gift.”

“Dog Wizard,”  Caris spat out.  

 _Part 3 -- Characters_

“Are we safe?” Joanna asked.  She watched Antryg as he stood there, clean and in freshly- laundered clothes.  He still wore all his cheap jewellery, and somehow made the borrowed clothes look as disreputable as the former set just by the act of wearing them.

“I shouldn’t think so.  I’m certainly not, and you....”

They stared at each other, and in the quiet, could faintly hear men’s shouts from the fields outside. “I wish I knew.”

Joanna thought fleetingly of herself as a damsel in a play, kidnapped and tearing about the countryside, a side character meant to move the plot forward and act as a romantic interest for the main character.  They were standing very close now.  The edge of her petticoat touched his boot.  She couldn’t feel it or him.  It was both real and an illusion.  Why did she feel this need clamouring in her gut when she wasn’t even sure if she could trust him?

Connection. 

 _Part 4 – Betrayal_

Joanna had been standing there in Gary’s bedroom for thirty minutes now, driving herself mad trying to determine if she was the one being betrayed and duped by Antryg, or if she was the betrayer. The problem with real and imaginary numbers is that you can’t dismiss the imaginary solution.  Like a negative solution to the quadratic equation, both real and impossible solutions can exist in certain contexts; math and physics ordering the world differently. 

Except it wasn’t Antryg -- it was Suraklin -- who’d possessed his mind these past years. She had to tell herself that.   

If only she were better at reading people; all those years of science and math camps, then scholarships for an early entrance to the university hadn’t helped.  The other students she couldn’t understand or connect with, those few years making a chasm she couldn’t cross.

She’d trusted Antryg, felt a connection to him she’d never felt before, and been sure he’d felt it as well.

Magic.  Damn magic.  What was love if not a spell?  Caris and Salteris had told her that Antryg, or Suraklin in his body, had cast an influence on her, to sway her judgement, and who was she to disbelieve it?  Even in her relationship with Gary, she’d always seen his manipulations of her from one step removed –- playing along because she’d wanted to feel human, wanted to be loved.  Her very feelings for Antryg seemed proof of how she could not believe him. 

Joanna rubbed her arms, enjoying the softness of the cotton shirt she’d changed back into.  They were clothes she’d left behind some other time she’d stayed at Gary’s place.  She’d seen the headlights a few minutes ago.  Gary would be home soon and she’d have to find something to say, some reason to explain her disappearance.  No one would believe her if she said she’d gone on a trip to another world, and she had her security status at work to worry about.

She had either just saved the world or brought it one step closer to destruction. If Antryg was right, Suraklin had taken over someone else’s mind and she was still in danger.  If Caris was right, she could go on with her life and her adventure was over.

The past couple of weeks, dangerous as they had been, she’d felt so connected to Antryg and their two worlds. Joanna blinked.  A future stretched ahead of her, of work and programming and more work.  Life with Gary, being persuaded to live with him, or being alone again.  Living in Gary’s house, where everything seemed so dead, including her.

Stepping softly down the stairs, she could see Gary sitting at the table, drinking wine.  Gary hated wine.  He made a gesture at her that seemed familiar, but one she’d never seen Gary make.

“Joanna, my dear,” Gary said. “I see you’ve returned.  You should probably telephone your friend Ruth.  She’s been pestering the police of three states to distraction.”

She went numb and a lead ball formed in her stomach.  This wasn’t Gary in front of her.  Damn magic with its impossible rules.  Damn imaginary solutions.  She blinked, feeling heat at the back of her eyes and fighting back tears.  She couldn’t cry now, not here, with this being-who-wasn’t-Gary watching her.

She had damned Antryg and both their worlds.

“I just had to get out of here for a while, Gary.”  Joanna forced a smile.  “After what you said at that party in front of everyone.”

“Am I forgiven then?”

Excuses -- she had to make excuses.  She couldn’t stay here and chat.  Gary would have called her ‘Babe’ at least once by now, or made some pathetic excuse for his behaviour.  There was no magic here.  No magic that she could use to fix anything. There had to be something she could do -- but if she let the being that possessed Gary know she knew it wasn’t him, she’d die first.

“I’ve cooled off some, just came to get my car.”  Joanna reached into her purse and took out her car keys. “I’m heading home.  See you later at work.”

She forced herself to walk to her car and to drive under the speed limit all the way home.  Her hands clenched the wheel so hard they turned white.  Cars sped past in both directions, passing her towards some future of their own.  She was going fast, so fast in this car.  Not walking through fields one step at a time, but barrelling along towards a future she would be a part of. 

Antryg must be saved. 


End file.
